Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! We have heard it all today. Can I give you one example, Senator Wong. You might want to look at the Queensland papers from over the weekend—there was a full-page ad from Mr Beattie, not even authorised, that said, ‘Queensland government driving coal infrastructure’. What about Premier Rann over the weekend advertising his South Australian budget? What about the $354 million that the state Labor governments spent on advertising last year? What about the $160 million spent by the Bracks government alone in relation to advertising? What about the $90 million spent by the New South Wales government in the run-up to the last state election? What absolute, patent nonsense! How hypocritical of the Australian Labor Party to come into the Senate and talk about advertising. We have been waiting here listening intently and you have not said one word, Senator Wong, about the state Labor governments’ spending—not a single word. How duplicitous of you to come in here and plead a cheap political point. They have all of a sudden slipped from walking around with puffed out chests as an alternative government back to their old habits of being a useless opposition. Not one question today was relevant to the Australian people. There was not one policy discussion. Again, all we heard was cheap political point-scoring.